James A. McDermid - Tonal Glints (2018)

KrysaliSound is so proud to release for the first time on the label the English composer James A. McDermid.
About his second album TONAL GLINTS the Bristol-based artist said: “This album is dedicated to my sister, Harriet, who died in August 2016. Throughout the 2 years she was ill - leading up to her death - I had started writing music as a way to privately articulate what I was feeling. After she'd passed away, there was the question around what to do with the many tracks I had written; they had, in all honesty, been written for her. For me to perhaps leave them sitting on a hard-drive seemed a disappointing end to what amounted to, in my mind, a tribute to her. About 6 months later, I was fortunate enough to be offered a 25 track album release (titled Ghost Folk) though Canadian label, Polar Seas Recordings, in April 2017.
Her death is the worst thing that's ever happened to me; once the original shock dissipated, a wall of grief fell on me and, as a result, I found it an almost impossible task seeing my world in quite the same way as I once had. The wear and tear of life became suffocating, so I continued with the idea of channeling what I was feeling, into music; however, coming to terms with Harriet's death, rather than her illness, started to cloud and confuse what I was doing.
In the end, it was Sophie Calle's book Exquisite Pain - a book arguably about grief in its various forms - that provided me with the clarity I needed. Calle's writing - in particular the people in it trying to come to terms with their own similar tragedies - helped shape and direct my own thoughts; Exquisite Pain acted as a conduit for what I was both feeling and trying to convey. Tonal Glints is the end result.
Tonal Glints is the 2nd of 3 albums I'll be releasing as a dedication to Harriet, concluding by the end of 2018.”